It was not until Canada became a Dominion on July 1, 1867, with its own Department of Justice, that any systematic effort was made to accurately record the names, dates and places of executions. Between 1867 and when the death penalty was abolished in 1976, 1481 people were sentenced to death, 710 of these were executed. Of the 710 executed, 697 were men, and 13 were women.
The first person executed in Manitoba was Joseph Michaud on August 31st 1874. Police chief Jack Ingram, the first Police Chief of Winnipeg who was appointed on February 24th 1874, appointed the executioner. He appointed Robert Hodson who had approached the Chief and informed him that he had previously acted as an assistant to the famous English Hangman, William Calcraft (1800-1897), and was willing to do the job.
Cree Indians at Fort Pitt held Robert Hodson captive during the Riel Rebellion, (March 20th until May 10th 1885). He was later appointed executioner for the largest single mass hanging in Canadian History. A massive gallows was constructed in the centre of the North West Mounted Police Post and their one time prisoner Hodson hanged the eight convicted Indians who were once his captors.
The only other person hung for their participation in the Rebellion was Louis Riel himself. He was convicted of High Treason in a Regina Court room, and hung on November 16th 1885, by an executioner named Jack Henderson. By some quirk of History, Henderson was held prisoner by Riel 15 years earlier at Fort Garry, Winnipeg during the Manitoba uprising of 1869-70. Jack Henderson hung two more men on June 13th 1888, but he miscalculated the weight of one of them, and the resulting drop through the Gallows trap door pulled his head from his body. Henderson was never permitted to officiate a Hanging again, but he spent the rest of his life with the reputation as “The man who hung Riel”.
This provinces second hanging was of Angus Mclvor on January 7th 1876, but the chosen Hangman bungled the execution, and the victim died a slow death of strangulation.
The third Hanging was of Louis Thomas on April 28th 1876 and performed by a trained executioner from the east.
The next execution in the province was the first to be held in Brandon. It was William Web, on December 28th 1888 who was convicted of murdering his wife Jane.
The next hanging in Brandon was of Hilda Blake on December 27th 1899. She was a 21-year-old housekeeper convicted of murdering her Masters wife, John Radclive was her executioner.
June 20th 1902 Gordon Walter, a 21-year-old farmer, miner, and soldier met his death in Brandon. He was convicted of murdering Charles Daw and Jacob Smith on July 31st 1901, and again the executioner was John Radclive.
John Radclive was the executioner of choice between 1890 until 1913, and turned his craft into a science. He designed his gallows to have the rope go over the top beam, one end of the rope was fastened around the accused, and the other end was attached to an iron weight, (350 lbs. 175 kg.) which was dropped from a height thus yanking the victim off the ground which caused his neck to dislocate, causing an instant death. This technique was known as “the jerk’em up Gallows.”
The first time Radclive used this device was on Reginald Birchall who was convicted of murdering Frederick Benwell in Woodstock Ontario. The execution took place in the Woodstock Jail on November 14th 1890. Radclive abandoned this barbaric invention after he found that Birchall took 18 minutes to die of strangulation after the weight dropped because it did not dislocate his neck. He returned to the conventional Gallows for future hangings.
John Radclive was his real name, which he used at all hangings, but he used the alias of Thomas Ratley in his Social Life. He died in Toronto in 1912 from excessive drinking. During his career he executed 132 persons.
In the beginning it was the duty of the Sheriff of the Judicial District in which the Prisoner was being held to perform the actual hanging. The Sheriff’s discontinued this practice, and employed an outside executioner to perform the mechanical parts of the execution, but they were still required to be present during the proceedings. Therefore, it is clear that the Hangmen were not Civil Servants, but Journeymen who travelled the Dominion selling his particular type of Service.
After the death of Radclive in 1912 the Dominion again required the services of an experienced Hangman. One was located in the Middle East serving as an executioner. He was an Ex-army officer named Arthur English, and was unofficially approached by the Canadian Government to move to Canada and take the position of executioner. English was a descendant of over 300 years of executioners in England: his uncle was then the official hangman in England who worked under the pseudonym of John Ellis. Arthur English accepted the offer and moved to Montreal where he took the Trade Name of Arthur Ellis after his uncle.
Arthur Ellis was the “Official Executioner to the Dominion of Canada” for over twenty years. He was a kind hearted little chap and an artist. Like all artists he took pride in his work, which he regarded as impersonal, he considered it his duty to perform his service, and he did. He used to say, “I am an executioner, (he considered the word “Hangman” as being vulgar) because I believe that I can carry out the judgement of the law with less pain and anguish to the condemned person than can any other man in the world.”
He loved companionship, and it hurt him that men would snub him because they did not like his chosen Trade.
The final execution in Brandon was on February 25th 1915 when Harry Green was hanged for the murder of Thomas Hill who he shot on May 17th 1914 in Hartney. The Trudeau government abolished Capital Punishment altogether on July 14th 1976 by a vote of 130-124, there were eleven men on Death row, and they all had their sentences commuted to life in prison.
Source:
http://www.winnipeg.ca/police/History/story27.stm